OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
JIM VAN NOSTRAND, Managing Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago this week — 2007
OLNEY — In their instinctive quest to reach spawning grounds, fish
in rivers throughout the state clash with walls of water tumbling over
dams.
Now one of those barriers, a dam 3 miles from Olney, has disappeared
after it was turned to rubble.
A lazy bend on the South Fork Klaskanie River has become a con-
struction site this summer as a team of federal, state and county agencies
collaborate with contractors, volunteers and nonprofits to reopen more
than 3 miles of prime salmon and trout spawning grounds.
Officials say the $300,000 project is an example of how water needs,
conservation concerns and reclamation goals can be achieved with a sin-
gle solution.
Jon Englund’s controversial riverfront condominium proj-
ect received the Astoria City Council’s stamp of approval
Wednesday.
The unanimous votes came after an all-day hearing at the
Liberty Theater, which featured impassioned pleas from citi-
zens to halt what they saw as an alarming development whose
height and mass will block views and change the character
of the riverfront while lining the pockets of developers at he
expense of ordinary citizens.
The rooms of the Commodore Hotel are slowly being reawakened
after a four-decade coma, and they contain some mysterious vestiges of
the past.
The three-story Lewis Building, located at the northeast corner of
Commercial and 14th streets in Astoria, was built in 1925. At street level,
it was home to Chris’s News, an Astoria institution and neighborhood
store, from the late 1940s until two years ago. The Commodore, housed
in the upper two floors, closed in 1964.
Now, the entire building is being rehabilitated.
50 years ago — 1967
Eleanor Wimber
An auger drill was used in a Neahkahnie treasure hunt by Tony
Mareno of Salem. The drill failed to locate the treasure chest and
Mareno returned this week with with a large power shovel.
Oregon’s National Forests were ordered closed to logging
and all but limited recreational use Thursday as extreme fire
danger, a long dry spell and uncontrolled fires continued.
Three pleasure boats capsized within 20 minutes of each other in rough
swells at Peacock Spit Saturday, and all 12 persons aboard the boats were
rescued, according to Cape Disappointment Coast Guard station and the
air station.
Tony Mareno of Salem has returned to the beach at Neah-
kahnie to resume his hunt for the legendary Neahkahnie trea-
sure, using a large power shovel.
Last week an auger drill Mareno was using brought up
some brass particles.
Mareno was not available for comment but he reportedly
believed them to be from the ornamentation on the outside of
the treasure chest, and he expected to bring it up the next day.
Friday, it was reported that four bores had been made and
nothing encountered, and that the contractors who were assist-
ing had gone to Portland. The deep depression on the beach
was filled up and leveled and the rope barricade removed.
Spawning will be difficult for fall Chinook, and perhaps for coho if
the area does not experience some rains soon to raise levels of streams,
according to Ernest Jefferies, director of hatcheries, Oregon State Fish
commission.
When the rich said
‘no’ to getting richer
By DAVID LEONHARDT
New York Times News Service
A
half-century ago, a top
automobile executive named
George Romney — yes,
Mitt’s father —
turned down
several big annual
bonuses. He did
so, he told his
company’s board,
because he believed
that no executive
should make more than $225,000 a
year (which translates into almost $2
million today).
He worried that “the temptations
of success” could distract people
from more important matters, as
he said to a biographer, T. George
Harris. This belief seems to have
stemmed from both Romney’s
Mormon faith and a culture of
financial restraint that was once
commonplace in this country.
Romney didn’t try to make every
dollar he could, or anywhere close to
it. The same was true among many
of his corporate peers. In the early
1960s, the typical chief executive
at a large American company made
only 20 times as much as the average
worker, rather than the current 271-1
ratio. Today, some CEOs make $2
million in a single month.
The old culture of restraint had
multiple causes, but one of them
was the tax code. When Romney
was saying no to bonuses, the top
marginal tax rate was 91 percent.
Even if he had accepted the bonuses,
he would have kept only a sliver of
them.
The high tax rates, in other
words, didn’t affect only the post-tax
incomes of the wealthy. The tax code
also affected pretax incomes. As the
economist Gabriel Zucman says,
“It’s not worth it to try to earn $50
million in income when 90 cents out
of an extra dollar goes to the IRS.”
The tax rates helped create a
culture in which Americans found
gargantuan incomes to be bizarre.
A few years after Romney
turned down his bonuses from the
American Motors Corp., President
Lyndon B. Johnson signed legisla-
tion that lowered the top marginal
tax rate to 70 percent. Under
President Ronald Reagan, it dropped
to 50 percent and kept falling. Since
1987, the top rate has hovered
between 30 percent and 40 percent.
For more than 30 years now, the
United States has lived with a top
tax rate less than half as high as in
George Romney’s day. And during
those same three-plus decades,
the pay of affluent Americans has
soared. That’s not a coincidence.
Corporate executives and others now
Department of Commerce
Michigan Gov. George Romney at the Republican National Conven-
tion in Florida in 1968.
have much more reason to fight for
every last dollar.
The theory behind all those high-
end tax cuts — a theory that I once
found persuasive, I admit — was
that it would unleash entrepreneurial
energy: The lure of great wealth
would inspire business leaders to
work harder and smarter, and the
economy would flourish.
Only the
wealthy have
enjoyed the
sort of healthy
pay increases
that had been
the norm in
the 1950s
and ’60s.
The first half of that theory may
well have come true. Many of the
world’s most successful companies
are American — not only Amazon,
Apple, Facebook and Google, but
also Exxon Mobil, Walmart, Johnson
& Johnson and JPMorgan Chase.
The second half of the theory,
however, has been a bust. Most
Americans have not flourished in the
era of a reduced top-end tax rate.
Incomes for the middle class and
poor have grown sluggishly since
1980, while the upper middle class
has done modestly better. Only the
wealthy have enjoyed the sort of
healthy pay increases that had been
the norm in the 1950s and ’60s.
The decline in high-end tax rates
has helped change the culture of
money. George Romney, a highly
successful and personally decent
man who thought that making even
a couple million dollars a year was
unseemly, beget Mitt Romney, a
highly successful and personally
decent man who has made a couple
hundred million dollars.
Across society, the most powerful
members of organizations have
fought to keep more money for
themselves. They have usually won
that fight, which has left less money
for everyone else.
What would be the right top tax
rate today? I don’t know the precise
answer. A top rate of 90 percent
clearly has the potential to drive
away entrepreneurs. But I am con-
vinced that the current top tax rate,
39.6 percent, is too low.
It has contributed to soaring
inequality, with the affluent having
received both the biggest pretax
raises and the biggest tax cuts. Plus,
there is no evidence that a modestly
higher rate would hurt the economy.
The recent president with the stron-
gest economic record, Bill Clinton,
increased the rate, while the one
with the weakest economic record,
George W. Bush, cut it.
This week, President Donald
Trump and Congress will turn their
attention to tax policy. After the
failure of their health care bill, they
are desperate for a legislative win
and hope to pass a bill by year’s end.
Of course, they are not considering a
higher top tax rate.
The question is whether their
plan will further cut taxes on the
wealthy. The early evidence is that it
will — enormously — while Trump
pretends otherwise. If so, the tax
bill will deserve the same fate as
the health care plan: energetic and
organized opposition, followed by
defeat.
LETTERS WELCOME
75 years ago — 1942
Students now working in the canneries will be encouraged
to stay at their jobs for a week or 10 days even after opening
of school Sept. 8, the school board decided Tuesday night after
hearing James Cellars of the CRPA again present the packers’
need for labor.
Cellars told the school board of the packers difficulties in
keeping their labor supply on hand, and mentioned that many
students were quitting to take a brief vacation before school
opening, many housewives were quitting so as to get their chil-
dren ready for school opening, and some parents did not want
their sons and daughters to work while going to school. The
CRPA now employs 58 students, he said, and other canneries
also have high school students working.
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